Giving voice to cutting down on fraud

As organizations become more aggressive in protecting sensitive data from being hacked by next-generation firewalls and sophisticated passwords, con men are turning to call centres to get personal information on people to commit frauds.

But an Israeli company believes its new software-based voice biometric analysis platform can divine whether callers are speaking with forked tongues.

NICE Systems said Wednesday that its Contact Center Fraud Prevention solution includes speech analytics that combined with other anti-fraud techniques can lower the risk of call centre agents wrongly giving away personal information.“To date there hasn’t been a specific focus on looking at fraud through the contact centre,” said Ben Knieff, global head of fraud product marketing for NICE’s Actimize division, which makes financial crime, risk and compliance software.

But the company says, human beings in contact centres can be a vulnerable spot in security.

For example, Knieff said, cons will get some information online about a person – say their bank account number – and call the contact centre to squeeze out more – like a PIN number or forwarding cash — so the con can continue.

Cons will do anything from trying to intimidate call centre agents, flatter them or use information they’ve gleaned about their target to get more information – for example, knowing one bank account number they pretend they’ve forgotten the target’s other account numbers.

Using what the industry calls social engineering, cons can be persuasive, Knieff said. One was able to get a debit card in the name of Microsoft Corp. co-founder and billionaire Paul Allen.

More recently another was able to persuade Amazon to give up enough information to destroy Wired magazine reporter Mat Honan’s Apple, Twitter and Google accounts.

Currently a freelance writer, I'm the former editor of ITWorldCanada.com and Computing Canada. An IT journalist since 1997, I've written for several of ITWC's sister publications including ITBusiness.ca and Computer Dealer News. Before that I was a staff reporter at the Calgary Herald and the Brampton (Ont.) Daily Times.

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